Hi all, just got my Maxum today. Me and a buddy took it for a test ride before I bought it and it ran great, motor looks very clean, all around good buy...I hope. It's a 1996 1750 with 120 Mercury Force outboard.

This afternoon my wife and I decided to take it out in the river for a short ride. We rode for maybe 15 minutes or so and decided to drift for a while. I shut the engine down and we drifted for maybe 10 or 15 minutes and then went to refire it. It cranked and cranked but wouldn't fire. I thought maybe I flooded it and waited a couple of minutes and tried again....with the only results being 2 dead batteries. We drifted up to a dock and I tied up and let it sit for 30 minutes or so more and then hit the key and it fired right up and we went straight back to the landing and loaded it up before the light was gone.

Once I got home I hooked up the water and tried to start it (maybe a 10 or 15 minute ride home) and it wouldn't start. I haven't tried it since because it is too late and I don't want to keep the neighbors up but I am fairly certain that I can try it in the morning and it will fire right up.

I've searched the net and found a few different answers from the simple to the OH NO kind. I found this forum and thought that someone on here must be familiar with this problem and thought I'd give it a shot.

I'm not familiar with outboards so I'm hoping someone with that model will chime in...

SP

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Skot...Do you have any spark? Could be the ignition module (sometimes called the coil). My father has the same motor on his 1994 1700 and had the ignition module go bad a few years back. Apparently there was a recall on the modules around that time. Not sure if Force will honor it this far along, but if you have no spark I would suspect the module to be the culprit. I have seen it many times on small engines, when the module heats up, no more spark.

CountryME, I can work on cars but am kind of intimidated by outboards. I didn't check spark at the time because I was too worried about getting back in. I'll try putting the ears on it today or tomorrow and seeing if I can get it warmed up and recreate the problem on land so that I can test different things. Thanks for the idea.

Also had an old engine that when it got hot the metal around the starter would expand and break the connection for spark. Honestly can't remember exactly where it was but it was just a matter of adjusting part of the starting unit.

I have to agree with oneradride. Three years ago I took my Dad's boat out for an hour and while I'd checked just about everything, I didnt check I had the gas vent open/unblocked. After running for about 10 minutes, power started lagging and finally quit. Turning over the engine got me nowhere. After about 30 minutes, I could fire up again. After the second time and trying to limp to shore, I finally realized what the problem was. Opened up the valve and voila. All problems gone.